'The Bombs Outside Are Fireworks': An Interview with Theater Director Richard Twyman

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

The walls of the Royal Court's rehearsal studio are covered in photos, timelines and character studies, as International Associate Richard Twyman prepares for the opening of his production of Fireworks, a new Palestinian play by Dalia Taha.

The Royal Court has been working in Palestine since 1998, led by International Director Elyse Dodgson. Fireworks marks their first full production by an emerging Palestinian playwright.

I met Richard to talk about what it's been like to develop a play in Palestine and stage it in Sloane Square.

VICE: Hi Richard. Could you tell me a little about Fireworks?
Richard Twyman: It's a play that looks at what happens when parents are denied their most instinctive need to protect their children, by living through a war. It's also about how those children start to grow up and mature in strange, dangerous, violent ways, because of the occupation.

It's by a Palestinian writer called Dalia Taha, who grew up in Ramallah in the West Bank. One of the things she lived through as a teenager was the Second Intifada. She applied to the Royal Court's International Residency Programme with an idea to write about her experiences during that period.

How did the play make it from Palestine to Sloane Square?
We started working with Dalia in 2013. She came and did a workshop [at the Royal Court] on her first draft, and we just kept working on it because we all saw real potential in her. Her writing was incredibly brave. It was an insight into Palestine that we'd never seen before, and also an insight into what it's like for a family to live through an act of violence.

Then in the summer of 2014, in the midst of the war in Gaza, we were in discussions about programming the play. And I had this very strange sensation of being in the rehearsal room with her and realizing that the play we were working on felt much tamer and gentler than what was happening in reality. So we did lots more work on it, and Dalia went away and made some big structural changes, and I think what she did was to let what was happening in Gaza into the play.

Why is it called Fireworks?
We were actually searching for a title for a long time because Dalia had always left it untitled. And over that summer we received a letter from another writer that we were working with in Gaza which explained how she was telling her young child that the bombs outside were fireworks, to protect them from what was happening. That metaphor just felt so apt.

In the UK, we sometimes see a lot of work from Palestine or about Palestine that can feel quite on the nose in terms of how it tackles the politics. Of course, there's a validity to that work, but what I find so inspiring about this play is that it comes from a totally different angle. Fireworks was a title that reflected that.

You went to Palestine twice last year with the Royal Court. What were the challenges of working there?
I first went in March for the second phase of a writers group we were running out there. We were in a town called Beit Jala, just up the hill from Bethlehem. Day to day it seems very peaceful, but the moment you look around or try to travel anywhere you immediately bump into incredible restrictions: the wall, the checkpoints, the illegal settlements. For example, even something as simple as going to see a piece of theatre together was impossible. Half the writers couldn't come because their permits don't allow them to travel freely between the West Bank and Jerusalem.

And then I went back in November and ostensibly it was the same, but I noticed that the level of tension had increased profoundly. At the time, there had been a series of attacks in Jerusalem and tensions were very high. People were saying it was the worst they had ever known. So that really affected people. But they get on with it. They keep protesting and they keep creating work and they keep living.

How did the writers respond to each other's work?
We knew we were programming Fireworks at that point and got together a group of actors to read it in Arabic, so that we could hear it in its original language. And it's really nerve-wracking when you do a play that's obviously written about those people, for that country, by someone from that country. But they were totally overwhelmed; they felt it tapped into something deep in their experience of living through those moments, in so many different ways.

I'll never forget how one person was laughing hysterically about how during one of the periods of bombing they were hiding behind a couch, because they'd convinced themselves that that bit of the room was going to be safer if a bomb dropped. And he was going, "Of course, it would make absolutely no difference, we would have been dead either way!"

Why is it important that Fireworks is seen in London?
When George Devine founded the Royal Court he wrote this manifesto, and one of the things it says is that he wants it to be a truly international theatre. Historically, it's always done that to a point, but since Elyse Dodgson founded the international department 20 years ago, she strove to go further and further afield and work in more and more challenging places.

But for me it's a very personal belief that we've all got to tell stories to each other. This sounds really cheesy, but we have to understand that we're connected to people in the world—even people we've never met before—and I think the best way to do that is to share stories about what it's like in places and countries and cultures that we don't directly know.

What do you think theatre can do that protests and petitions can't?
I remember packing my suitcase when I first went to Palestine—packing books and scripts and playwriting manuals—and I was thinking, Why aren't I taking out other things that are more useful? Why am I taking these words? Shouldn't I be doing something more worthwhile?

And within about a day or two of being there, I had a total reversal. I was talking to these writers and I realized that actually, in a situation like that, where a culture is slowly being systematically eroded by powerful forces opposed to it, to have voices that can articulate in every field is just so fundamentally important. Having different art forms is crucial to having a role in the world and a voice that can be heard. I don't want to talk for anyone, but there's a real sense of being totally fucked over and subject to much greater geo-political forces.

When we were casting, I talked to [Palestinian actor] Saleh Bakri on Skype. He loved the play and knew Dalia already, and I said to him, "How would you feel about coming to London and doing this play?" And he had this massive smile and he said, "I think it would be absolutely right to come and do this play in London, in Britain, because it's all your fault anyway."

Do you feel like you have more of a responsibility, as a British director, in the way you represent the people and ideas in the play?
Yeah, I really do. There's an incredible responsibility to the people's stories you're telling and you have to be aware of that every step of the way. But the way we work here is always inside out; it's always from a writer within that country, and also you always have the writer in the rehearsal room. So it's partly my responsibility, but it's shared with someone who really knows their shit.

Having Dalia in the room has been extraordinary. I mean, in theory she's relatively inexperienced because she's only done a few plays, but she holds herself and she talks and engages in the work like she's been doing it for 50 years.

What's been the most challenging part of the rehearsal process?
Kids! No, I'm being slightly facetious. We've got four amazing children in the play, but obviously they still have to go to school, so it's a logistical thing of how to get through all those scenes when you've only got three hours a day with them. They come in and they're high on sugar, but they're amazing. They give us this sort of adrenalin shot.

The design process was really interesting because there are so many visuals in our heads of what Palestine is. An audience come with that baggage, so we have to find a way of stripping it away and letting them see these characters afresh. There's something about the news that almost deadens people after weeks of seeing it. The cliché is rubble, dust, concrete, destruction, people wailing… But there's also the color, the kitsch-ness, the life, the humor, the joy, the absurdity.

What do you hope the audience gets from watching the show?
Understanding, I think. To understand a percentage, a part, a small residue of what it's like to live in a situation like that. So you can reach out across the globe to where this is happening and come out the theatre knowing a bit more about it. And then maybe that will affect the way you see things in the future.

And also because I think it's just a really extraordinary play. It's a great work of art. It's darkly funny and it's immensely painful.

_Fireworks runs February 12 through March 14 at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in London._

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